oh london...

so i know what is like to be homeless in London in the middle of february when its cold and rainy.

I know, I know. What a great way to start a blog....but its true. I aint lying.

Ok, from the beginning.

So we went to London this weekend. We knew we had to leave early because our flight was in Milan Bergamo and Milan alone is a 2 1/2 hour train ride. Our flight was at 10:45. So Kim and I get out of class at 2:30 and she calls me telling me Ryan Air went on strike! So im liek great, I had just gotten to our street from Accademia, so I go running back to the computer lab, and of course every student wants to go on a computer right then. lol. So I found one of my housemates cousins and I asked her to check the site. It didnt say anything about a strike, so i take the number down and go running back to the apartment. We get there and I call the Italy number, and of course its all in Italian. So we decide to run to our advisor, Margherita. so we get there, and she calls and finally gets to liek an operator, who wants our flight number, so we confirmed the flight, so we are all happy cuz we can still go to london. so she asks us where we are flight flies out of, and she is like, you gotta hurry, so she tells us how to get the bus to the city where our flight actually is! Which is another hour away, so its 3:15 now.

So we sprint to the trainstation and buy our tickets and wait for maybe 40 minutes. So we're now on the train headed to Milan, and we're like ok. its all good. But of course we have some problems and our train starts running late! And we only have a half an hour gap with the buses if we want to make it to the airport on time! So we get to the trainstation with 20 minutes to buy the tickets for the bus and to find the bus. I seriously ran and spoke to every single person that worked in that train station asking wher eI buy the stinkin tickets and where the bus was, and they all sent me to the wrong place (Yea, i was speaking in Italian with all of them too!!!). So we get to the information booth and he is like the biggest jerk ever, and im trying to understand his italian, and he tells us that we buy the tickets on the bus, so we run out. and ask some people at one of those magazine stands and they tell us where the bus is. So we're RUNNING. and we find the bus station and we ask every single bus driver where the one to bergamo is as we're running in the direction they are pointing us, and we're yelling GRazie! as we're going. IT was great. so we get there, and he is like, si, bergamo. biglietti (tickets)? and was like WHAT?! so i tell him in really broken italian that the guy at the information booth told us we buy them on the bus, and i showed him what time our flight was, so he let us on for free! thank God for nice italians!

So we get to the airport, thru the checkin, onto the plane. no problems. We actually ended up sitting behind the two funniest people ever. These guys - they're laugh was hysterical. Talk about contagious. Cuz I started laughing, and Kim is like what? and i was like crying, I couldnt tell her, so she listens and hears them laugh, and she starts laughing so hard she's crying. So all these people are looking at these two guys, and then at us behind them laughing so hard we're crying, and they're all like, what? But seriously. about 10 rows of people around us ended up laughing on this flight for a good 10 mintues because these two guys (i think they might have been drunk, but whatever) were laughing so hard. so we landed in london two hours later. so its like 11:30 or so.

And we finally find the bus there, because that airport was an hour outside of central london too! So we're on this bus, and hes like where do you want to go? and we were like, um...are friends are in hyde park, we want to go there, hes like thats huge, so i'll just drop you off at hyde park corner. So we try calling our friends. The ones phone wasnt working...it wouldnt go thru, and the other one just kept going to the voicemail, so we were like oh no! So we start just walking, and it starts raining. So we took some cover under the Irish Embassy's awning. then thought that maybe we should find somehwere else to stand. we didnt want to look toom uch like sketchballs. So we're wandering. its like 2 in the morning midn you, and London goes to bed very early. So finally we're like, lets jus ttry to get to the hostel we have booked for Friday night. So we knock on the door to some building, i dont even know. Cuz we could see the night guard sitting at the desk. So he comes out and we tell him our dilemma, and he's like. Oh no! do NOT go to that hostel. and we were like what? He proceeds to let us come in and tells us that he used to live there and that he would not even go back there. That its full of crime, drugs, and prostitutes. He was the nicest man ever. Tried to help us find a hostel or a hotel. Let us use their "toilet" and offered coffee and tea. So finally, they walk us to the trainstation nearby cuz there is a 24 hour cafe there. and we had a place to sit out of the rain. So we're sitting there, and we eat the 4 kitkats kim had a both had about 10 m&ms. lol. So we buy a donut and some tea. and we both took 20 minute naps at separate times cuz we didnt want to both fall asleep....so at about 5:30 mcdonalds opens and we get bagels and hashbrowns, so by 6 we decide that we might as well walk to buckingham palace which was down the street. So we got there, and its still raining. but I gotta say. ITs pretty cool to be at buckingham palace when there is not a soul around.

So we decided to take a video of the place with no one around, and its pretty funny...i must say. Then we walked across the street to this garden and walked around, and the sun was just starting to come up and it wasnt really raining anymore and we walked around this little lake with ducks and swans on it...it was beautiful. So we get tot eh street, and we're like BIG BEN! so we got to see big ben when he was chiming at 7oclock in the morning and nobody was around. So we walk around and we see westminister abbey and parliament and all that.

Then we decided to walk all the way down the Thames, which Kim touched. lol it was cold apparently. And, she almost slipped and fell right into it, it was pretty funny. So we walked across this random bridge and the sun was rising, and it was gorgeous, and we saw the London Eye. Then we kept walking and saw the Globe Theatre and the London Bridge, and we finally got to that Bridge with the Towers. The London Tower Bridge, or something, I dont remember what its called. But I absolutely loved it. So then we finally got in touch with our friends. They had just woke up from their lovely slumber in beds (or even on the floor) in a nice dry warm building, while we were now going on about 26 hours without sleep (unless you really want to count the 20 minute naps lol). Oh, how lovely. lol. Craziness. I still cant believe this all happened to us.

So then we start walking back, and we foudn a bagel place for a reasonable price. So I had a cheese bagel with chicken ceasar on it! SO GOOD. I hadnt realized how much i missed ceasar dressing and bagels (they're bagels arent as good as the US, but still...it was a bagel!). So we walk back to the train station and go to lastminute.com for a new hotel for Friday night. The guy was awesome. We told him our entire story and he got us two beds in a girls dorm style hostel. and he told us where to go on the Tube and things. So we mastered the tube and went to the hostel. slept for about 2 1/2 hours. then bought some flip flops cuz we reazlied we forgot them. then went to visit our friends. for maybe half an hour and on the way back we got KFC. the only sides they have in london are corn, beans, cole slaw, or gravy ? what is that? so we decide, lets get the family feast. So we each had 4 pieces of chicken, a corn on the cob, 2 things of fries, and beans. for 5 bucks each. It was awesome! Then we went to the hostel, showered, and past out.

Ok. So now we're onto Saturday morning. We get up and have our free continental breakfast, wasnt too bad. Then we checked out, and continued on our journey with all of our stuff once again (my back kinda hurts lol). We walked over to abbey road since our hostel was closeby...took some pics...then we decide to go to the National Gallery. So we get there and we saw like everything. It was awesome! We saw Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks, and some Raffael, and Michelangelo, and Monet, and Manet, and Picasso, and Van Gogh, and a ton of stuff I had studied in WEstern Art 2 freshman year. We were there seriously, like for hours. So we walked out of the museum, directly into a war protest. IT was like. an anti-american cult. Very interesting. I took some pictures for my black and white class cuz i thought it was an interesting topic to pick. Some of the stuff started to make kim and I mad. They had signs there that said something like : Bush. World's Number one terrorist. and then other ones that wer elike, tell the truth about 9/11 - inside job. and we were like, EXCUSE ME? Im surprised we didnt get killed. lol. no, we werent in danger, we just hung near the cops the whole time. lol. But one guy did give us dirty looks cuz we wouldnt sign some petition, but we're like, our signatures wont count here....and hewas like mean. But then we had some double cheeseburgers and hot chocolate (cadbury hot chocolate!) and it was soo good. We sat across the street from the protest an dsang America the Beautiful and the Star spangeled banner lol. but apparently, in London. They have a condiment...its said something liek...america sauce. its basically liek ketchup and mayo in one or something. lol. but it was gooood.

Oh, then we went to Hamley's...6 floors of toys! It was crazy. I bought a gift for someone...heheh. and so did kim.

So then we went over to the London Eye and we went on it. It was like 7 o'clock by now - the view was beautiful, but i would not pay as much as i did to go on that thing again...a bit of a rip off. So then we went to Harrods...but it was closed. But we walked down the street, and I had kim take a picture of like every window of every store that we passed because I loved the outfits (Jess i need you to make me a few lol!) and we walked aroun the stores there. we wanted to get starbucks, but they closed too...it wasnt even that late! stinkin London. so then we went and bought some postcards, and some cadbury eggs. I really wanted to buy the bag of th emini eggs from the vending machines, but most were empty and then the one ate my pound :-(

So we went back to the lastminute.com guy and asked where the bus was to go back to the airport, cuz it was like maybe 11 by the time we were there, and he asked how the hostel was and stuff, and he asked when our flight was...6:30 in the morning, so he's like, your gonna be so bored at the airport for 6 hours. So he calls his friend and we got to go to a dance club on a boat for free! so we killed a few hours there, then got the bus. And its really weird. wiht the steering wheel on the right side, and driving on the left side of the street. Freaked me out. I couldnt get used to it. I kept looking the wrong way when I crossed the streets, even though it tells you which way to look on the ground lol!

So we got to the airport and london's airports stink and made us check our backpacks, cuz apparently your purse counts as a bag for them...even though it didnt on the way to london. so that was a lovely 7 pounds, which is double in american cash. But the flight was fine. Then we got the bus back to milan, and ran to catch a train to florence. turns out we didnt have to run cuz it was 40 minutes late in going...but we got back here safely. (PS, ryan air is cheap, but flies out of small airports, so it took us 12 hours to get into london from florence even though the flight was only two hours...just incase you ever are traveling the way i am! haha).

but all in all it was a good trip, a few tears, a little ranting and raving, very sore backs and blisters on the feet, but it was quite an experience (cant say i would do it the same way i did this weekend, but i would go back to london). and we did laugh a lot. and its probably gonna be one of those stories that yo u tell the grandkids one day :-) oh...and thank God they speak English in london.

So this weekend....France (but its with the shcool, so it should be fine). And Lewis and Luciana (two of the professors from the digital media department) are coming in on wed and want to have lunch with us digital kids....and i believe Paul and Dar (the couple that does the college group up at school) will be here from Wed to Fri as well, so I gotta see about getting together with them...yay for friends coming to visit!

oh, and less than a month for the fam to come...cant wait for that ;-)

alright. Im gonna go eat something..im starved. Hope you enjoyed the adventures that was london.

oh london...